


Living Ghosts

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: Neville's parents didn't leave him when they left the world behind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mimm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimm/gifts).



> There's nothing too questionable in here, but take this as a warning for general creepiness. Also, I'm going to claim that St. Mungo's was invaded in the Second Wizarding War for angst purposes.

When Neville is young and Augusta still believes that his parents will wake up, she leaves him with them while she talks to the healers. Those conversations stretch on for hours, and more often than not he falls asleep in his mother's arms. When he sleeps, he stays so still that Augusta more often than not wakes him by screaming, convinced she's lost her grandson, too.

When Neville is seven and the healers have given up on his parents, he stays in his room for hours on end, not moving, barely breathing. His relatives avoid his room like it's an omen of death and people start to whisper that maybe Bellatrix did something to little Neville Longbottom too, that she's why he doesn't have a drop of magic in his bones and spends so much time with his mind somewhere else.

He hears them, sometimes. It's not much, just little whispers when he is alone from what sounds like what his mother's voice should be, faint echoes of someone he thinks is his father, but it's the only memories he has of his parents that aren't in St. Mungo's or so vague they're barely memories at all. 

When he boards the train, he has his father's wand, grandmother's dreams, a toad of his own, and two voices murmuring in the back of his mind. When he stands in the greenhouse, he can hear a faint mumble of approval that is inaudible from anyone he knows or anywhere else in the castle. When he doubts himself, there is someone giving him advice and soft words of comfort. When St. Mungo's is taken over and his parents are killed, he wakes up screaming. He had a world in his head, people who believed in him when no one else did, and now they are gone.

The halls of Hogwarts are a battleground now, and Neville is ready to fight. 


End file.
